Located right in front of Exit 5 of Dangsan Station on the Seoul Subway, the Yeongdeungpo South Branch Office of the National Health Insurance Corporation is equipped with a unique and previously unseen type of parking garage: a double row of in-built elevator parking garages. 

Shinwoo Ubicos (www.swuc.co.kr, CEO Jung-ho Heo, hereinafter referred to as Shinwoo), a mechanical parking lot specialist, completed the remodeling project in 2009, and the site is said to have achieved both space efficiency and safety by having two elevator parking lots operating at one entrance. On June 30, 2009, Shinwoo was awarded the Certificate of Appreciation for Excellent Parking Facility Construction by Ji-hwan Jang, head of the Yeongdeungpo South Branch of the National Health Insurance Corporation.

"We developed and applied a separate software program to make good use of the unique structure of the site while ensuring safety," said Kim Moon-jae, director of Shinwoo, who was in charge of the remodeling project. "It was expensive, but we focused on quality, and we completed the site by running tens of thousands of simulations of entering and exiting the parking lot."

The first parking garage was installed in the 1990s, but due to its remote entrance and inconvenient parking arrangement, it was underutilized and left unused. However, when the industrial complex purchased the building and began renovating it, the parking garage remodeling work began.

Shinwoo, which has unrivaled technology for the double-row elevator type, adopted double brakes to reduce noise and vibration due to the built-in type of the building, and successfully completed the construction by adopting cutting-edge technologies such as door safety between two units, securing space by using column members, adopting safety sensors and main panels with proven durability and reliability, and mounting a built-in turntable.

The remodeling project cost about 250 million won, which is 1.25 to 1.5 times the cost of new construction, according to Shinwoo. "Parking-conscious building owners are trying to improve poor parking conditions to reduce vacancy rates," said Kim, adding, "The time has come for building tenants to consider parking conditions as well."

In fact, tenants are increasingly choosing self-parking over mechanical parking when selecting residential and office properties, and if mechanical parking is available, they prefer buildings that can accommodate large vehicles. Reflecting this trend, the parking garage is a mixed-use structure that also accommodates medium, large, and RV vehicles. With a total height of 30 meters and a parking capacity of 48 spaces, one space in front of the entrance can park small and medium-sized passenger cars (28 spaces), and one space in the back can park large and RV vehicles (20 spaces). There is a difference of about 300mm in length and height between medium and large vehicles.

What's unique about this site is that the parking garage's interior space is also carefully designed by adding a different design to the existing gray color of the garage, such as orange for small and medium-sized vehicles and green for large RVs. "We applied strategies to differentiate ourselves from other parking lots not only in terms of technology but also in terms of design," said Director Kim Moon-jae. "We are currently painting the pallets once every two years." In addition, the four sides of the parking garage are sloped instead of flat to reduce the level of contamination inside the parking garage, which can be caused by calcium chloride corrosion and snowfall in winter.

"Normally, there is a difference of about 100,000 to 150,000 won per unit between the inclined and flat types of parking garages, but considering the characteristics of this site, which has no stopper and a built-in turntable, we applied the inclined type to both sides of the garage," said Kim Moon-jae. "The inclined type is easy to maintain and convenient for users," he added.

Currently, mechanical parking lot maintenance costs average around 10,000 won per pallet. This is a site that operates from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. and is maintained by Shinwoo himself, which is an average maintenance fee for government offices, as the cost is set according to the engineering unit price and inflation rate.

However, there are many sites where the total maintenance fee is less than 100,000 won per unit, due to a large number of unregistered companies and low awareness among building owners. In particular, although there is currently a registration system for mechanical parking lot maintenance, the lack of administrative control measures has clouded the maintenance market due to the large number of unregistered companies.

The current Parking Lot Act stipulates that only those who have registered for the mechanical parking equipment maintenance business can perform maintenance work, but in practice, unregistered companies are proliferating due to the lack of checks on their registration status, and the industry is pointing out that the system needs to be improved or supplemented so that only authorized companies can perform maintenance work.

"The mechanical parking garage market is currently suffering from low-priced maintenance contracts due to excessive competition, especially when elevator companies are offering up to 50% of the average unit price for parking garage maintenance," said Heo Jeong-ho (pictured), CEO of Shinwoo. He also pointed out, "We need to register a maintenance business with manpower and equipment to legitimately compete for maintenance services, but the reality is that it is becoming an unfair game from the beginning."

"The minimum price per site should be around 250,000 won to cover expenses and labor costs, but it is often lower than that," said Kim Moon-jae. "Maintenance companies jokingly say that they are in the red the moment they pick up their toolboxes." 

He has been in the parking lot industry for more than 10 years, with the company's catchphrase "Quality Management and Customer Satisfaction" as the No. 1 quality name in the parking lot industry, and has been prioritizing quality over price, demonstrating the brand power of a small company. Currently, Shinwoo Ubicos has cooperated with many companies besides Lotte Engineering, and is the first registered company in the mechanical parking lot maintenance business, and has been a member of the Korea Software Industry Association since 2007.